core concepts

10 core concepts

Continuation / Value Thresholds

Hero BB v BTN open, flop JT6ss, BTN cbets 75% - know where your continuation threshold is - if they bet only 1/3 pot, we are continuing much wider.

- try to find the shape of the range

Maximise EV, not how often you win a pot

sometimes the best play involves taking a line that either wins a huge pot or more often than not loses a small pot (e.g., don't bee too focused on "protecting" made hands from draws, etc. in order to sacrifice the most +EV line for your overall range)

Nut advantage & Polarized range

The nut advantage dictates how much you can polarize, and how large you can bet. Betting larger and more aggressively narrows your opponent’s range quickly, so it’s important that your “value” hands can extract money from villain’s value hands after triple barreling. For that reason, BTN must use a polarized strategy consisting of nuts and bluffs. If BTN were to do this with medium-strength hands they would simply fold out worse and get called by better.

with middling equity advantage, we push our middling equity using small-medium bet sizes -> Bet size is directly related to nut advantage

It’s easier to over-bluff rivers

as the optimal value-to-bluff ratios are more restrictive (towards bluffing) than on earlier streets.

- if you find yourself on the river facing a bet, try to estimate if your opponent is bluffing enough according to this cheat sheet. If they are bluffing just a single combo more than they should, all of our indifferent bluff catchers become profitable calls and vice versa (we always fold when they are under-bluffing even slightly).

- when villain has over-bluffed earlier streets, they arrive on the river with more bluffs than in theory, making it even easier to get out of line on the river.